The most populare Hashtag in @twitter history is #JeSuisCharlie http://t.co/vfKXllJk1G ” via @alexandre_comte pic.twitter.com/REe7zrsMXE
— Elijah J. Magnier (@EjmAlrai) January 9, 2015
The New York Times reports: The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front.
“This is a dangerous moment for European societies,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.”
Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and radicalism, called the Paris assault — the most deadly terrorist attack on French soil since the Algerian war ended in the early 1960s — “a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point,” noting the target and the number of victims. “This was a maximum-impact attack,” he said. “They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”
Anti-immigrant attitudes have been on the rise in recent years in Europe, propelled in part by a moribund economy and high unemployment, as well as increasing immigration and more porous borders. The growing resentments have lifted the fortunes of established parties like the U.K. Independence Party in Britain and the National Front, as well as lesser-known groups like Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West, which assembled 18,000 marchers in Dresden, Germany, on Monday.
In Sweden, where there have been three recent attacks on mosques, the anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist Sweden Democrats Party has been getting about 15 percent support in recent public opinion polls. [Continue reading…]
Jonathan Laurence writes: For the first seven hours after the attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, the National Front, France’s far right political party, kept an old feature about the influx of Roma and “gypsies” into French cities on its website. Then, shortly after noon, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the increasingly popular party with the slogan “The French Come First,” appeared in front of three French flags and hammered out her demands—and a selfless offer.
It is time for “frank and clear responses” against “inaction and denial,” she declared. In other words: The country’s two main political parties have failed to stem the Islamist tide, and you the voters now have all the evidence you need that France requires new leadership. “I intend to assume this vital responsibility so France can defend itself in the war that has been declared upon her,” she continued.
Populist parties in Europe have long done a fine trade based on the cultural and religious differences of Muslim citizens. That has been particularly true in recent years as efforts to integrate Muslims has become mired with controversy over headscarves, halal food, and the construction of mosques. The National Front, like other populist parties in neighboring countries, has emphasized the link between the cultural accommodation of local Muslims and recent political instability in Egypt, Libya, and Mali.
Mainstream French parties have tried to fend off the National Front’s advance ever since it unexpectedly made it to the final round of presidential elections in 2002. Last May, its nationalist, xenophobic message helped the party capture 25 percent of the vote in the European Union parliament elections. After Wednesday’s tragic attack, the party’s relevance can no longer be doubted. [Continue reading…]
The Huffington Post reports: Several attacks on French mosques following Wednesday’s brutal Charlie Hebdo shooting have added to the fear of retaliation against the country’s Muslim population.
At least 12 people were shot and killed and more than a dozen others wounded in what is being called a terror attack against the French satirical newspaper on Wednesday. The publication faced threats prior to the shooting and was firebombed in 2011 for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Two Muslim places of worship and a restaurant affiliated to another mosque were attacked Wednesday evening and Thursday morning local time. Three grenades were thrown at a mosque in Le Mans, west of Paris, and a bullet hole was found in one of the mosque’s windows, AFP reported.
A Muslim prayer hall in the Port-la-Nouvelle district in southern France also received shots shortly after evening prayers, while a blast erupted at L’Imperial, a restaurant affiliated to a mosque in the French village of Villefranche-sur-Saone. No casualties were reported at any of the attacks. [Continue reading…]
Nahrain Al-Mousawi writes: In the wake of the deadly attacks on the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, some are portraying the current showdown as one between Western free speech versus an angry and intolerant Islamic world. In fact, it is the Islamic countries of the Middle East that have led the way in attacking the extremists of groups such as Islamic State using the instruments of satire. The use of mockery and caricature as a way of mocking Islamic extremism is, in fact, in some ways far more pronounced in the Middle Eastern media than it is in Europe.
Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) has slaughtered hundreds of Iraqi civilians and soldiers, raped and enslaved hundreds of women, held public crucifixions and stonings in Syria, and staged the executions of U.S. journalists and British aid workers. The group is revolting, abhorrent, and terrifying. But the region on which Islamic State has unleashed its sadistic campaign has responded producing a surprising volume of satire.
On Iraqi state TV, a satirical soap opera dedicated to mocking Islamic State, State of Myth, depicts the gruesome yet absurd “contributions” ISIS fighters and ideology unleash on a fictional town in Iraq, such as a green-energy car-bombing factory– cost-effective, reasonably priced, environment-friendly, and export-ready! All this information is provided by an IS engineer in a TV interview, where the female news announcer has resorted to wearing a sheet while asking questions.
While some claim humor is a way of taking back power – the power to name, to shame – on an uneven playing field, the show appears to be making fun of not only IS’s crude, fumbling, and sadistic methods to gain power, but also the strategic powerlessness of Iraqis trying to play along with, manipulate, and knowingly skirt the cruelty of that blundering power. [Continue reading…]
Reuters reports: Twelve years ago, one of the two brothers suspected of the shootings at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was a young man like many others in France, more interested in girls and smoking dope than defending the Prophet Mohammad.
But between 2003, when Cherif Kouachi delivered pizzas and dreamed of being a rap star, and Wednesday, when he and his brother were named chief suspects in the killing of 12 people in Paris, the French national went from punk to most wanted.
Kouachi, 32, is being sought along with his older brother Said, 34, in a manhunt following what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist attack of “exceptional barbarism” against journalists and two police officers.
How Kouachi – described as a “pipsqueak” by his lawyer during a 2005 trial for involvement in a cell sending young French volunteer fighters to Iraq – started down the road to radicalism is a story becoming increasingly familiar in France and elsewhere in the West.
Questions are already being raised over how an ex-convict known to intelligence services for his radical leanings could have been able to carry out Wednesday’s massacre.
Born in eastern Paris to Algerian parents who died when the brothers were still children, Kouachi grew up in an orphanage in the western city of Rennes. Armed with a sports teacher diploma, Kouachi returned to Paris and delivered pizzas to get by.
“He was part of a group of young people who were a little lost, confused, not really fanatics in the proper sense of the word,” his ex-lawyer Vincent Ollivier, told Liberation daily. “He hadn’t really given any great thought to Islam and didn’t seem all that determined.”
In a 2005 France 3 documentary, which includes footage taken by a Paris community center, Kouachi is seen rapping in English, in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, a baseball hat worn backwards on his head.
Despite a record for selling drugs and minor theft, he is described as someone more interested in pretty girls and music than the Koran. But that was before he met Farid Benyettou. [Continue reading…]
BBC News reports: Islamic State militants have attacked Iraqi security forces in the central city of Samarra, killing two people and injuring 28 others, officials say.
They reportedly carried out five suicide bomb attacks on checkpoints along a motorway west of Samarra.
The bombings were followed by mortar attacks on the city itself.
IS surrounded Samarra, a predominantly Sunni city that is home to one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites, after launching an offensive in northern Iraq in June.
Soldiers and allied Shia militiamen have managed to stop the jihadists overrunning the city, and have recently retaken towns and villages to the south with the help of US-led coalition air strikes.
The latest assault on Samarra by IS militants, who regard Shia as heretics who should be killed, began before sunrise on Thursday. [Continue reading…]
This, from yesterday's New York Times, might be my favorite correction ever. HT @NYMag. pic.twitter.com/3f0zUzzKRo
— Kathryn Schulz (@kathrynschulz) January 8, 2015
NBC News reports: After a long day of rapidly changing information, US counterterrorism officials said Wednesday night that they cannot be certain what the status is of the three suspects in the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine. Information from French sources has been contradictory, they said.
Earlier Wednesday, two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News that one of the suspects in the attack had been killed and that two others were in custody. However, the officials later said the information that was the basis of that account could not be confirmed.
Reuters reports: An 18-year old man sought by police over Wednesday’s shooting attack at satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo handed himself voluntarily to police in northeastern France, an official at the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Police are hunting three French nationals, including brothers Said Kouachi, born in 1980; Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982; and Hamyd Mourad born in 1996, after suspected Islamist gunmen killed 12 people.
The official, who declined to identify the man, said he had turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, in northeastern France at around 2300 GMT.
McClatchy reports: Security experts who viewed videos of the attack said the attackers clearly were professionals, likely with combat experience.
“They appear very calm during the attack. They’ve clearly handled weapons before. They know exactly what they’re doing, from the moment they arrive until they flee,” said terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp, the research director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College.
Still, the attackers apparently were unfamiliar with their target, reportedly arriving first at the building where the newspaper’s archives are stored. Once they realized their error, the Agence France Press news agency reported, they moved a few doors down to the weekly’s headquarters.
As you can see from this picture in Paris tonight, the French are not afraid!
#CharlieHebdo #JeSuisCharlie @lrozen pic.twitter.com/5STP4gzO02
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) January 8, 2015
NBC News reports: One of the suspects in the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine has been killed and the two others are in custody, two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
Mashable: French police officials have identified three men as suspects in the deadly terror attack at the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
One of the men, 35-year-old Cheriff Kouachi, was convicted on terrorism charges in 2008.
Two of the suspects, brothers Cheriff and Said Kouachi, 32, are French nationals who were born to Algerian parents in Paris. The nationality of a third man, Hamid Mourad, 18, is unknown; police believe he is a high school student.
Their names circulated on Facebook and Twitter for an hour before French authorities confirmed that the Kouachi brothers had been identified.
One of the officials who spoke to the Associated Press said they were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network.
Vice News reports: Charlie Hebdo has never paid much attention to sacred cows, and has lampooned everyone from the pope to presidents in its polemical caricatures and irreverent editorials.
Speaking to VICE News on Wednesday, Peter Gumbel, author and global fellow at The Wilson Center’s Global Europe Program, described Charlie Hebdo as “a magazine that provokes deliberately,” and called the attack “a carefully premeditated attempt to destroy the magazine and kill all the cartoonists.”
“They picked the day when there was an editorial meeting when all the staff would be there,” said Gumbel, “they knew who they wanted, they asked names of people before they killed them, it was premeditated murder.”
Tom Bishop, director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture, and a professor of French at NYU, explained that Charlie Hebdo “holds a very particular place in French culture because of the country’s tradition of satiric magazines.”
“They’re not at all party-aligned,” Bishop told VICE News. “They tend to be viewed as holding nothing sacred. That’s their attraction.”
Famous for its unsparing, sardonic — and often obscene take on the news, politicians, and religion, Charlie Hebdo was pretty much born out of controversy, after its former incarnation, Hara-Kiri (subtitled “Stupid and vicious newspaper”) was banned by the government in 1970 over an insulting headline about the death of former French president and military hero Charles de Gaulle.
The new publication, which was baptized Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) in homage to Charlie Brown, soon made a name for itself as an anti-religious, anti-clerical, and anti-establishment voice in the French media landscape. Despite a limited circulation, the leftist and staunchly secular magazine was well known across France, and together with satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine came to form the backbone of French political and religious satire.
BBC News reports: At least 37 people have been killed and 66 others injured by a bomb blast outside a police academy in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, police say.
Two men were seen getting out of a minibus and walking away shortly before it exploded beside dozens of people queuing to enrol at the academy.
Afterwards, body parts and debris from the bus were strewn across the street.
There has so far been no claim of responsibility, but an offshoot of al-Qaeda has carried out similar attacks.
Yemen has experienced a wave of violence in recent months, with militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) battling Shia Houthi rebels who have taken control of the capital.
AFP reports: The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its fleet will be deployed to the Gulf to support operations against the Islamic State group, a military news site reported on Tuesday.
The deployment of the marine battle group is due to be announced by President Francois Hollande when he gives his annual new year’s speech to the armed forces onboard the Charles de Gaulle on January 14, according to the “Mer et Marine” news site.
The Elysee Palace confirmed to AFP that the carrier would travel to the Gulf on its way to India, where it is due to take part in exercises in mid-April.
“The Charles de Gaulle will be available to participate, if necessary, in all operational missions”, the Elysee spokesman said. [Continue reading…]
Brian Whitaker writes: In a pre-dawn raid on Monday, militants attacked a Saudi border post from the Iraqi side of the frontier. The resulting clash left three soldiers and four militants dead, according to the Saudi government news agency.
It later emerged that one of the dead soldiers was no ordinary border guard but the commander of Saudi Arabia’s northern border forces, Brigadier General Awdah al-Balawi. This suggests that the attack, far from being random or opportunistic, had been carefully targeted and perhaps based on inside information regarding the general’s whereabouts.
The attack has been widely attributed to Islamic State, with some reports saying the rebel group has now claimed responsibility for it. This might be viewed simply as a reprisal for Saudi participation in the US-led bombing campaign against Isis, but Isis has also been seeking to extend the current conflict in Syria and Iraq into Saudi territory.
There is no doubt that Isis has both sympathisers and active supporters inside the kingdom – it claimed responsibility for shooting a Danish citizen in Riyadh last November, for example – but whether it will be able to establish a military foothold is another question. Isis tends to flourish militarily in places where central government is weak, but that is not the case in Saudi Arabia. [Continue reading…]
With candor you’re unlikely to find from a traditional news outlet, Joakim Medin reports from Kobane: Streets and strategic buildings have been taken over by slow street fighting, which culminated in the important December 22 recapturing of Kobane’s Cultural Center. A few hours earlier, the happy fighters of this YPG unit had managed to make their own successful early morning attack against a house on the southern front, where an IS leader named Emir Abu Zahra was known to reside. They told me that in the firefight he was shot and killed.
“They also found a few things of his, which they took with them,” Dayan told me.
A slightly older fighter who speaks German came back into the room where we drank tea and perused the findings. Among them was a very thick, professional Dell laptop — one of those rugged, military-style Latitude XFRs, which has a ballistic armor protection system and is sold in stores for a few thousand dollars. They are meant to be used in demanding environments by oil workers, the police, and the army. It’s an expensive piece of equipment, but something you can probably easily pick up after having robbed the central bank of Mosul.
There’s also a traditional looking Middle Eastern dagger among the possessions they said they took from the now dead IS leader. Surprisingly, it’s not an authentic one, but a tacky copy with an Egyptian sphinx emblazoned on the case, and a horned goat head on the shaft. There are no blood traces on the blade.
And finally, sitting in front of me, is a large, transparent plastic bag filled with white powder. The YPG fighters told me they are not sure what this could be. So I dipped my index finger into it, and sure enough, it’s a big bag of cocaine. I must admit, I am familiar with the taste of the drug.
“Cocaine? What is that?” they ask.
The other guys have no knowledge of this drug, or how people use it. It’s nothing they have heard of or encountered before. But Dayan suggests that the powder is something Abu Zahra was distributing in smaller portions to his fighters.
There have been persistent rumors and accusations of drug use in the ranks of Islamic State fighters. Leaders in the group have been said to drug their militants to give them greater courage as they go into battle. This has led to both successful, but also reckless and ineffective suicide attacks by fighters who can easily be shot down. Certain IS militants have been described as “drug-crazed,” and Kurds report having found mysterious pills, capsules, and syringes on living and dead IS fighters. [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: For months and months, former CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson played an agonizing game of brinkmanship regarding her privacy: She strongly suggested that the federal government was behind a series of intrusions into her personal and work computers, though she has consistently hedged her wording to allow some wiggle room. In May 2013, for example, she told a Philadelphia radio host that there could be “some relationship” between her technology intrusions and the government snooping on Fox News reporter James Rosen. And in her book “Stonewalled,” she cites a source as saying that the breaches originated from a “sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency (NSA).”
No more wiggling around. Attkisson has filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court, alleging the U.S. government’s “unauthorized and illegal surveillance of the Plaintiff’s laptop computers and telephones from 2011-2013.” The suit lists as plaintiffs Attkisson, who resigned from CBS last year, her husband, James Attkisson, and daughter Sarah Judith Starr Attkisson. Defendants include Attorney General Eric Holder and Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe as well as “UNKNOWN NAMED AGENTS OF the UNITED STATES, in their individual capacities.” Those folks, the suit alleges, violated several constitutional rights, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
The complaint lays out a narrative familiar to close readers of “Stonewalled.” It speaks of Attkisson’s work for CBS throughout 2011 in uncovering facts about the U.S. government’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation. Roundabout mid- to late-2011, notes the complaint, the Attkissons “began to notice anomalies” in how various electronic devices were operating in the household. “These anomalies included a work Toshiba laptop computer and a family Apple desktop computer turning on and off at night without input from anyone in the household, the house alarm chirping daily at difference times, often indicating ‘phone line trouble,’ and television problems, including interference,” notes the complaint. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: A survey of writers around the world by the PEN American Center has found that a significant majority said they were deeply concerned with government surveillance, with many reporting that they have avoided, or have considered avoiding, controversial topics in their work or in personal communications as a result.
The findings show that writers consider freedom of expression to be under significant threat around the world in democratic and nondemocratic countries. Some 75 percent of respondents in countries classified as “free,” 84 percent in “partly free” countries, and 80 percent in countries that were “not free” said that they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about government surveillance in their countries.
The survey, which will be released Monday, was conducted anonymously online in fall 2014 and yielded 772 responses from fiction and nonfiction writers and related professionals, including translators and editors, in 50 countries.
Smaller numbers said they avoided or considered avoiding writing or speaking on certain subjects, with 34 percent in countries classified as free, 44 percent in partly free countries and 61 percent in not free countries reporting self-censorship. Respondents in similar percentages reported curtailing social media activity, or said they were considering it, because of surveillance. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: The admission from Hezbollah’s deputy chief was startling. The group, he said over the weekend, is “battling espionage within its ranks” and has uncovered “some major infiltrations.”
To analysts and even some Hezbollah loyalists, the remarks were immediately taken as confirmation of long-swirling reports that a senior operative had been caught spying for Israel, disrupting a series of assassination plots abroad.
The accounts in the Lebanese and Arab news media, relying on unnamed sources, identify the mole as Mohammad Shawraba, the man charged with exacting revenge for Israel’s assassination of a top operative, Imad Mughniyeh, in 2008. They say Mr. Shawraba fed information to Israel that foiled five planned retaliation attempts. [Continue reading…]